How to Do a Brand Audit and Why It's Crucial?
How to Do a Brand Audit and Why It's Crucial?
Does your logo appear worn out? Why has your website traffic decreased significantly?
Are you losing business to competitors? What happened to your followers on social media?
"You need to undertake a digital brand audit" is how we would respond to these concerns. But how can it ensure success? This detailed blog will answer all your queries.
First, What Is a Brand Audit and Why Does It Matter?
They say prevention is better than cure. Well, it’s true in every situation, be it a medical case or a business setting.
A brand audit is like a corporate health checkup. The health of your brand should be periodically monitored.
A brand audit may be what you require if you're wondering how to increase your customer base or sales. By doing a brand audit, you can find out what's working and what's not in your company.
To explain brand audit meaning in simple words—if you want to find out how well your customers think your brand is performing, you need to conduct a thorough brand audit.
A brand audit report will normally look into every aspect that goes into creating a brand, though the specifics will differ from business to business.
Examples include, but are not limited to:
- Storytelling and other visual marketing techniques.
- The overall satisfaction and experience of the user.
- The ideal client and broad target market.
- Market share and general brand awareness.
- The usefulness and inventiveness of the existing product line.
- Ongoing marketing tactics and how they relate to long-term objectives.
When To Do a Digital Brand Audit?
As mentioned earlier, there are several reasons for performing a digital brand audit.
- Your business focus is shifting.
- The CTR (click-through-rate) of emails has decreased.
- Your company's branding is inconsistent throughout.
- Your marketing initiatives aren't producing any sales.
- Sales have decreased.
- Brand recognition has decreased.
- There is low customer loyalty.
- Your website receives little traffic.
How to Conduct a Brand Audit?
You have the option to audit yourself using information that ought to be accessible.
There are many different metrics you can track when performing a brand audit. However, the crucial ones to enhance customer experience vary depending on the situation.
Establish a framework
To build a framework, you should start by considering your mission and strategic goals.
You should think about your target market, your marketing strategy to reach it, and the industry structure you operate in.
Some businesses will be permitted to mention their go-to-market plan.
This consists of the overall strategy, which takes into account the target market (in terms of geography, industries, job categories, and buyer personas), product line, rivals, distribution methods, alliances, and price.
Check the statistics on your website
Examining your online analytics and sales statistics is another efficient technique to comprehend your audience.
This information can reveal the most popular pages on your website, how long users stay on it, and what devices they use to access it.
The data may also be used to identify the marketing channels that are generating the greatest traffic and conversions for your business.
You can use this important information to guide your future resource allocation decisions.
Examine your social media channels
You can learn a lot about your audience by auditing your social media accounts. As you examine your social media networks, try to provide answers to the following:
- Are our social media platforms consistent with our brand identity?
- Is the tone of our brand the same across all platforms?
- Do our social media posts reflect the ideals of our company?
- On which platform do our fans interact with our material the most?
- Do we communicate with our fans frequently?
- Do we utilize a range of content marketing modalities as part of a content strategy audit?
Evaluate your sales data
Even though you should already be doing this frequently, including it in your brand audit can give you a wealth of information about current consumer and market trends.
Here, you'll evaluate whether or not you've delivered on your brand promise to provide people with what they want and whether you're keeping up with rivals and their offerings.
Your focus can be redirected by taking a close look at your sales statistics, which can indicate customer purchasing trends.
Do you observe any unexpected drops in sales? Change the buyer locations, perhaps? To comprehend your brand health and how it influences your sales, all of these factors should be examined.
Analyze your rivals
You must learn how your competitors are doing from a brand standpoint in order to have a complete picture of the competitive landscape.
What subject matter do they write about? Is their brand attracting attention? Do they establish any brand alliances?
Although some of this work will be manual, there are tools available that can help you delve deeper into different aspects of a business.
Draw conclusions and take action
You'll be prepared to conduct final brand audit reviews once you've finished all of the required steps and gathered the appropriate information.
Visualize your data to understand it better. Finally, consider all the lessons you have gained after doing a brand audit, and strive to put them into practice.
Check to see if the adjustments are having the desired impact.
When you take action in a certain area, keep an eye on the development and outcomes and, if necessary, make adjustments.
Based on the analysis you've done, you should focus on visual branding elements and branding solutions for small businesses.
You will be able to examine all of your brand's advantages and disadvantages at this point. A SWOT analysis should be carried out at this time as well.
So, What Does a Brand Audit Offer?
Do not attempt to repair what isn’t broken!
If you want to change any area of your firm, you need a brand assessment procedure; including updating your logo and email template.
It's critical that you recognize what's effective and what isn't, whether it calls for little adjustments or a total redesign.
Even highly successful businesses can always improve their branding efforts. Businesses expand, the economy changes, and target audiences' preferences shift.
A brand audit enables you to identify the aspects of your branding elements and strategies that you need to improve.
Related: Essential Branding Elements That Will Ensure the Success of Your Next Website
Analyze The Entire Market Performance of Your Brand
You may better understand how your brand is perceived in the market by conducting a brand audit.
It involves a thorough examination of the internal branding of your company (voice, culture, and positioning), the exterior branding of your company (websites, social media, or SEO), as well as your infrastructure and systems (internal systems).
Sort Marketing Collateral by Effectiveness
Conducting a digital brand audit will put you in a solid position to assess what marketing collateral has worked and what needs further thought if you're considering rebranding or refreshing your company.
A marketing communications audit is essential for determining what collateral you currently have and what needs to be updated to align with your newly discovered brand strategy.
This is a little bit time-consuming process and you can set your priorities accordingly. After all, Rome wasn't built overnight!
Assess How You Stack Up Against Other Competitors
How much revenue might you be handing over to your rivals as a result of poor branding?
Customers will choose the rival they think to be the more trustworthy if they are confused by your inconsistent message. It indicates that your competition has a powerful website and a recognizable brand voice.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, conducting a brand audit doesn't have to be laborious or expensive.
To get the data you need to make the necessary modifications, all you have to do is adhere to these easy procedures.
However, why not save yourself from all this hassle and just focus on your core business? Get help from PLAN A, one of the best auditing companies in Dubai.
What will you receive in exchange? Sincere planning support for your brand's growth aimed at improving its reputation and market position.
Get a free consultation today.